An Assistant Professor: A Novel of Sorts. A Tribute to R. K. Narayan

By Adeeb Yusef Salam

Dedicated to R. K. Narayan 15 Years After His Death

A timeless search for personal identity where the various kinds of love penetrate one another in unexpected ways

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, India’s R. K. Narayan, the protagonist and assistant professor, Thomas Sleiman, explores the relationship among the different kinds of loves in the heady context of a search for personal identity. Erotic, divine, and familial loves all compete and complement one another in the life of Thomas, who is not the regular literary gangster, or the predictable member of a community of deviant dilettante. . .as the conclusion, with all of its mysticism, genuine affection, respect for the “dead” Narayan, and devotion to the beloved, clearly testifies. - Anthony Aookeregbe In An Assistant Professor Salam skillfully combines postmodern and traditional perspectives to create a profound, moving, and sometimes disturbing vision of a life and career spanning ethnic, geographical, moral, and ideological boundaries. . .As he surveys the wreckage of the postmodern world, Salam’s carefully situated narrative is enriched by reflections on the literary work of Narayan and Graham Greene as well as on a shelf-full of contemporary poets, philosophers, and theologians. . .One is left in the end puzzling over whose voice is heard when the main character protests that “I don't live to write nor do I write to live. I am just an Assistant Professor, professing mostly my ignorance of things that most everyone else thinks are obvious. For some mysterious reason, I have been compelled lately to write a book, which I want people to read." They will not be disappointed. - Meister Richard Woods, O.P.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan James Fiction
• Release date: Nov 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781683500926

Adeeb Yusef Salam

Salam is a widely traveled university professor from the Middle East who has lectured and published on philosophical and theological topics worldwide. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Salam lived in San Diego and Washington, D.C. before moving permanently to the Middle East where he has lived for 20 years. He has resided for short periods in Madras, Addis Ababa, Tehran, Istanbul, Kampala, and Beirut.

Book preview

PART ONE

PLACES IN

THE HEART

CHAPTER ONE

Reluctantly rising from its pacific repose, the moon melted the darkness. The bright days were growing longer now, bravely curtailing the dense darkness of the nights. In spite of a respectable northwesterly wind whistling through the woods, the Chinese chimes hanging with rigid dignity from a neatly constructed gazebo challenged the moon’s obstinacy. The Indian chimes that had hung in the same place for about a quarter of a decade, before the children had all but destroyed them, had been more generous in their liberal response to the breeze’s slightest touch.

Reclining under the gazebo on the east balcony of his three-story home, a solid stone villa nestled among the young mountain pine and aspen in the shadows of the ancient Cedars of Lebanon, Thomas J. Sleiman straightened at the first sign of moonlight, as if the moon demanded recognition. And indeed it did. For this night, it appeared much larger than normal, much larger even than the sun, whose radiance it now imitated.

He’d been away on one of his notorious trips, and now was soaking up the sanity of silence after an unusually hectic day at the university. The sound of the flowing river brought with it bits of conversations he’d had during the day. One persisted:

By the way, did you know Narayan died? asked Mr. Morrison in his still distinct British accent, though he’d lived in the Middle East, away from Britain, for fifty years.

No! What? I didn’t. When? Where? Dr. Thomas Sleiman inquired frantically.

In Madras, I think, or I suppose they say Chennai these days, don’t they?

Who told you? How old was he? At what time? Where exactly was he? continued the assistant professor, shocked and bewildered by the news.

Well, I heard it on the BBC yesterday, May thirteenth, but I don’t know the exact day or time or any of the details, said Mr. Morrison with a touch of surprise at the barrage of questions.

Oh my God, I was there in Madras when he was dying, Thomas thought. I was probably on my way to the airport. He imagined that the great author of timeless novels such as The Vendor of Sweets and The Bachelor of Arts might very well have expired at the precise second when he was passing by the author’s house to leave India.

It seems we were both leaving India at the same time, Thomas speculated aloud.

I do recall hearing that he was ninety-four or ninety-five, said Mr. Morrison, disturbing Thomas’s private speculations.

Oh my God. This time he said it aloud. I was there, Mr. Morrison. I was there when he was dying … . He was not ashamed to show emotion in front of his colleague and friend, nearly forty years older.

He’d always had much older friends. There was the Catholic priest at his grade school, twenty-five years older, who took him on weekend trips when he was just ten years old; they had philosophical discussions sleeping out under the stars with the priest’s little nephews. There was the highly distinguished American professor of literature and philosophy, twenty years older, whom he’d befriended at a Trappist monastery where he’d taken refuge for an entire month after leaving the seminary, and, as some of his critics had said, his vocation.

Leaving the seminary had been one of the first traumatic decisions of his young adult life. Another had been the decision to enter. Most everyone was shocked since he’d been a somewhat conceited teenager—his vanity a natural result of being a handsome, broad-shouldered, popular athlete who continually received praise from all quarters. Though disposed to conceit, his general and deeper disposition was one of kindness and almost humility due mostly to the sound characters of his parents, who had given him much affection, and what he always considered the precious gifts of hope and his Catholic, cosmic faith. His first love was shocked as well; she didn’t believe he would go through with it, until he did. He was surprised by her reaction since they weren’t going together when he made the decision. In fact, he’d kissed her only once, and that’d been a good three years earlier. But she scolded him shortly before he left for not knowing that after that kiss she vowed to marry him, even though she never told him anything about it.

The priest who inspired him to join the seminary at age nineteen was ten years older as well. Excepting celibacy, he’d been quite content with his newfound spiritual road. But when his fellow seminarian and close companion committed suicide by throwing himself into an aloof and raging sea, the young Thomas Sleiman ran away and for two years couldn’t bear to look back.

The occasion of this looking back was the momentary solidarity he felt with his dead friend one lonely summer day when the first real love affair of his mature life ended in utter hopelessness. She too had been older, a medical student whom he’d met at the university in his home state in the Western United States. She was an artist of sorts, an iconographer who’d fled an oppressive Eastern European regime at the risk of her own life. He admired her courage and was captivated by the suspenseful stories she told of how she was almost detected, not once but three times as she fled Romania via Poland. He admired her intellect too. She was virtually all alone in a strange country, and Thomas too felt all alone after leaving the seminary so suddenly. For a time, they’d been a perfect match. When she left him, his first experience of despair, he realized what his friend must have felt the moment before he jumped.

Instead of jumping, Thomas held on and withdrew into long periods of silence and pathetic attempts at prayer during which he counted on the more efficacious prayers of those who loved him. He eventually returned to the seminary, although he left again a few years later after earning degrees in philosophy and theology from a reputable university in the capital city of those same United States.

When the full moon had ascended to the middle of the sky and the wind had died down to no more than a tender breeze, Thomas retired. As he dozed off, he heard again, By the way, did you know Narayan died?

The first person he saw at the university the following morning was Mr. Morrison. Entering in while knocking, as was his custom, he found Thomas reclining in his favorite corner chair, gazing out the window, lost in his early morning contemplation.

Well, did you see the news last night? Narayan’s death made world news for the second night in a row.

So it’s world news, is it?

Why, of course it is. He not only won the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, India’s highest literary honor, but he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature in 1980, and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

I know, I know, Mr. Morrison, I meant it as a confirmation, not a question. His thoughts ran wild. I have long known that he was great, he mused, and I have lately known that in some small but significant way my life was somehow to be affected by his. May thirteenth … May thirteenth … my father’s birthday, the attempted assassination on the Pope’s life, the Pope, my other father, the world’s father, May thirteenth, the day of the apparition of the Virgin Mary to the children in Fatima in 1917. May thirteenth. Why did he die now, just as I have returned from my first trip to India, a trip that has changed me on the inside? And why was I introduced to him when and how I was?

He went back to May thirteenth of the previous year when Graham Greene’s famous novel, The End of the Affair, fell fatefully into his hands. That book offered redemption, of a sort, after his second extramarital love affair ended so abruptly. It’d lasted only four months, and they’d never consummated the affair, but it was as intense as anything he’d ever before experienced. And so was the guilt and pain afterward. He was indebted to Greene for this atonement and became a loyal disciple. He vowed to read everything Greene ever wrote, but struggled for months to get through the first chapter of A Burnt Out Case. As his lover’s plane departed for India on June seventeenth, he hurriedly read the final note she’d placed in his hand before she left:

Don’t feel too bad about what happened, my sweetheart; we haven’t done anything so terribly wrong, have we? In fact, maybe, just maybe, God himself reserved these days for us in heaven from all eternity, for without you, I would have surely died and would have had no chance of ever returning home. You’ve given me another chance, another life, for I was planning to take my own. Don’t you see? Don’t lose heart, my heart, for if you lose heart—you, the Prince—what will happen to us, your servants? Don’t worry; be strong. God will bless you and your family and give you all a long life.

A bottomless pain emerged from deep within him; it even prevented him from crying. The introductory quote from Greene’s novel escaped from his mouth: Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist and into them enters suffering so that they may have existence. It was from the great French thinker Léon Bloy, the same Bloy whose last-minute intervention into the lives of Jacques and Raïssa Oumansov Maritain prevented them from carrying out the suicide pact they’d entered into shortly after their marriage. That’d been a remarkable intervention, especially since Maritain went on to become one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. But as he climbed into his jeep to leave the airport, Thomas wasn’t thinking about philosophy or literature, Bloy or Greene; he was coping with the pain under the crushing sounds of departing airplanes.

And who introduced you, Thomas, to the novels of Narayan?

Graham Greene, he said at once, adding thoughtfully, they were close friends you know.

Yes, I think I’ve heard that before. Greene was indeed a great writer himself, of course, but he’s a bit too depressing for me.

I really wouldn’t know. I’ve read only one of his novels.

And which one was that?

Thomas feared that Mr. Morrison had been reading his mind.

"The End of the Affair. Have you read it?"

A long time ago, said Dr. Morrison, as he struggled to remember the plot.

Thomas capitalized on his friend’s momentary lapse, lost all inhibition, and imposed himself excitedly upon his cornered listener by recounting for him the main movements of the story. When he got to the crucial part, his friend was astonished at how animated the assistant professor had become.

He tells the story with such expression, he thought to himself.

Thomas described with great precision and accuracy all the events that unfolded in the novel on the crucial day. He repeated the date three or four times, twice in one sentence. On June seventeenth, it was on June seventeenth that the affair ended. He explained how Maurice, one of the main characters, had found his ex-lover’s journal and had read in the entry for June seventeenth the whole story of how and why she had left him and vowed never to see him again. It was a deal she had struck with her God. She’d promised her Lord that she would do anything, even give Maurice up, if, as he lay dying in front of her, God would somehow bring him back to life.

It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last time that Dr. Thomas Sleiman told the story to anyone even appearing to be interested. And each time he recalled with incredulity how it was that that novel had slipped into his hands during the very same time of his own affair and how his affair had also ended, unbelievably, on the seventeenth of June, though in quite different circumstances: in a noisy, foreign city called Beirut, which he had learned to call home. It was no wonder that the assistant professor thought of Greene as a kind of prophet whose every word had to be taken seriously and whose every novel had to be read.

This belief was only strengthened when he came across tributes paid to Greene by important critics such as Alec Guinness, who wrote upon Greene’s death in April of 1991 that Greene was a great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. He was almost prophet-like with a surprising humility. William Golding said, Graham Greene was in a class by himself… . He will be read and remembered as the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety. And then there was William Faulkner who, after reading The End of the Affair, wrote, For me one of the most true and moving novels of my time in anybody’s language.

Thomas felt confident in his worship of Greene. So confident, in fact, that he began to share his new love with many of his colleagues in the English department and insisted that Greene’s novels be added to the syllabi of the relevant literature courses at the university.

Why don’t you read any Greene in your twentieth-century literature course? he said one day to a female colleague, a visiting professor from America.

I haven’t read anything by Greene, she said almost proudly.

You haven’t? he blurted, hardly able to conceal his aversion.

Is he that important? she asked, astounded at his response.

Yes, he’s even more important than that.

Than what? she asked.

Well, I mean that he’s not just important; he’s very important. And not only that, he’s a Catholic author, and this is a Catholic university.

Oh, you mean that we should include him simply because he’s Catholic?

Of course not, that’s not what I said. Listen, just read him and see for yourself.

All right, she said. And which book would you recommend? she added sarcastically.

"The End of the Affair."

Oh, I saw the movie.

Thomas nearly gave up in despair.

That’s too bad; your imagination may have already been damaged beyond repair.

Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Thomas; lend me the book.

He went back to his office and reverently took down the book from its shelf. He handled it as if it were a relic and carried it in procession to the altar of his colleague’s desk where he feared that it might be scourged and sacrificed. His worst suspicions were confirmed the following morning when he found the book lying on the dusty floor of his office. As he picked it up and dusted it off, he regretted that he’d lent it to her.

That’s what I get for casting my pearls before swine, he mused, and prepared himself for an attack. Within minutes, she appeared at his office door.

Thomas, she bellowed, it’s just like the movie. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see why people think he’s so good.

You read it awfully fast, he said challengingly.

I’m a fast reader.

He wanted to ask her about the June seventeenth entry in Sarah’s journal, but he prudently restrained himself and made an excuse to get away quickly.

Before he could escape, she proclaimed sonorously, Thomas, maybe you should stick to philosophy and let us in the English department, who are trained in literary criticism, deal with literature.

Maybe so, he said, trying to be a good sport, and after excusing himself, hurried off to the bathroom. He felt sick to his stomach, but the feeling subsided. When he returned to his office, he saw to his horror that she was still sitting there waiting for him.

Still here?

Yes. I wanted to talk to you about something.

Feel free.

One of my best students, a girl, of course, came to my office clearly confused and conflicted over what you’ve been teaching them in your philosophy course.

Thomas, though listening, noticed for the first time how radically short her hair was, and wondered secretly whether she’d always had such a repellant appearance. It wasn’t just the hair, or the lack thereof, that put him off, but her entire manner; in her presence, he somehow felt guilty of his masculinity.

Did she get specific?

Yes, she did. I’ll tell you in a moment, but in short, she said that your assessment of good literature is entirely at odds with mine.

Well, we all have different tastes, he said casually to avoid an argument.

It is not about tastes, Thomas. She is my best student, and I have spent a lot of time forming her mind.

You mean brainwashing her, he said inwardly.

It seems your principles are entirely opposed to mine, and this is causing undue stress in this poor girl’s soul, she said somewhat arrogantly, and this time not without some anger in her voice.

Well, at least she believes there are such things as principles and souls, he mused silently. Perhaps there’s still hope for her. Thomas looked at her with pity and said, I do admire your candor, Pauline, and appreciate that you have brought this up with me directly instead of discussing it behind my back or with the dean, as another colleague of mine, who has the same complaint, often does.

She knew to whom he was referring. Well, for your information, we have brought it up with the dean.

We?

Yes, you’ve just admitted that others are upset as well.

I know of only two, and you are one of them, he said confidently. Thomas was not at all threatened and thanked God there were only two against him; at his university in America, nearly the entire faculty, except two, had been against him. The Middle East, at least in this regard, had proved to be a saner place for Thomas to live and work. Pauline, who had no real long-term commitment to either the country or the university, but who had simply wanted a change from the monotony of her dull academic life in America, and so had taken a position as a visiting professor in Lebanon for a few years, was now fully agitated by Thomas’s calm and confident behavior.

You said that she got specific, correct? Will you please tell me what exactly is bothering her?

I’ve had enough agitation for today, Thomas. I don’t feel like continuing this conversation. The next thing you’re going to tell me is that we should be reading the complete works of Jane Austen.

Now there’s a real woman, Thomas thought to himself. You mean you don’t?

Of course we don’t.

In heaven’s name, why not? She is a woman, you know.

We’re willing to defend our reasons, she replied archly, ignoring his challenge to her brand of feminism.

"How can you deprive them of a heroine like Fanny Price of Austen’s Mansfield Park?"

"Mansfield Park? she cried. You see, this is exactly what I’m talking about, Dr. Sleiman, she said sarcastically, refusing now to call him by his first name. Are you not aware of the fact that critics as prominent as Kingsley Amis say that Fanny Price is ‘a monster of complacency and pride,’ and that Lord David Cecil once said that Fanny Price was ‘a little wooden, a little charmless, and rather a prig’? And others have said worse things about her and about the novel as a whole."

Why don’t you let the students make up their own minds?

We’ve only a limited time, and I want to make sure they get the best.

What could be better than Austen’s masterful writing on the moral implications of priestly ordination as a masculine fulfillment of personal vocation and as influencing the morals of a nation at large? said Thomas, refusing to drop the subject.

You can’t be serious, can you?

"Of course, I’m serious. Have you ever read Mansfield Park, or have you just read what your critics say about it?"

"Well, if it’s anything like The End of the Affair, I’m sure I will loathe it. And, again, please take my advice: stick to philosophy and leave literary criticism alone. It’s not your field."

Nearly forgetting that she was a woman, which wasn’t entirely difficult to do with this particular female, Thomas approached her to physically escort her out of his office, but he managed to compose himself, and said politely, I’ll take that into consideration, Pauline. Thank you. Now if you will excuse me, I have a class to teach.

On the way to class, he had to walk by the office of Pauline’s ally, who was waxing eloquently on the superiority of the analytical tradition in front of a few students who’d gathered around him: You’ve got to get that awful word mystery out of your vocabulary, or you’ll never become critical academicians, he declared authoritatively. Thomas walked past unnoticed, entered his classroom at the other end of the hall, greeted his students, closed the door, and said with conviction, Today we shall continue to gaze together at the doctrine of the angels, which conveys the awesome mystery, splendor, and unity of the cosmos itself.

Halfway through the lecture, a student raised his hand and asked deviously whether angels wore clothes, at which the whole class burst out laughing, ruining the atmosphere that Thomas had worked so hard to create. He wanted them to take angels seriously because he believed they played a crucial role in the human struggle for eternal salvation and everlasting happiness. He was just about to lose his temper when he reminded himself not to take the insult personally. Anger is one of the seven capital sins, he privately reminded himself. This is exactly what the fallen angels want. If I get angry now, I will ruin everything. Anyway, I’m prepared.

Thomas forced a smile and retrieved from his briefcase a large print of one of Raphael’s famous paintings of angels. I knew you were going to ask that, James, and actually, I’m glad you did because I must say that, as much as I admire Raphael, I do think he has done an enormous disservice to angelology.

To what? a biology major exclaimed, not able to control her dismay. You mean this constitutes an entire branch of theology?

Yes, of course it does. I mentioned that before, didn’t I?

"But you’ve also been telling us that theology is a genuine science, and when you were talking about Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Natural Theology, you almost had me convinced, but now I’m confused again. First of all, you’ve said that angels are invisible—if, that is, we assume for the sake of argument that they even exist, of which, by the way, you haven’t convinced me. Secondly, how does anyone dare to imply that we can scientifically study angels, regardless of whether they are always naked or not, she said sarcastically, throwing a look of impatience at James. I mean no disrespect, sir, she added sincerely, but I have tried for two months now to see that theology is, as you claim, a science, and at times, as I’ve said, you’ve almost convinced me, especially when we did Natural Theology, but at other times, I feel like you’re dragging us back to the Middle Ages. My biology teachers think that some of what we do in this class is a little strange."

That’s no surprise coming from biology professors, Joan, he said, not a bit put off by her comments, as she was one of his best students. What is really troublesome, my dear, is that some of my own colleagues in the religion and philosophy departments, not to mention the English department, think I am a little strange too.

They all laughed spontaneously, which created the right moment for Thomas to continue. Look at these ridiculous-looking angels. He held up the print of Raphael’s chunky, nude, babyish angels. These symbols have inspired still worse ones. He took out more prints of nineteenth-century angels, disgustingly girlish, soft, skinny, and forgiving, without an ounce of real authority necessary for genuine forgiveness.

I suggest, rather, that these images are much closer to the truth. He turned out the lights and projected Fra Angelico’s paintings on the classroom screen. When he turned on the lights, he saw that the mood he’d worked so hard to create before, and which James had destroyed in a reckless moment, had returned.

His thoughts raced. I must act now to expose the demons for what they really are: egomaniacs, swollen, bloated spiritual spiders, always eating, never satisfied, forever sucking into themselves other selves in an attempt to destroy the human creature’s genuine individuality.

And act he did. Before long, nearly the entire class was open to what he was saying.

One student sitting in the back of the class looked visibly moved by the horrifying description of how the fallen angels sought literally to devour souls for spiritual food. Sir, he proffered, didn’t you tell us before that the two great temptations of the devil and his legions were either to convince us that they didn’t exist, or to convince us to give them too much attention?

Yes, very good, exactly.

Then why, may I ask, have you spent so much time on the fallen angels; what about the angels of light, and what about God?

"Thank you for asking, Dominic. I think you’re ready to hear about the angels of light, and about that God whom they serve and adore. You see, whenever we are talking about the angels of light, and especially about God himself, it is always better to begin with describing what they are not. This is called, in the Christian theological tradition, the via negativa, the negative way. If we begin with the positive terms, we are bound to miss the point. For when I affirm something about God, as in the statement God is good, it’s highly misleading because our grasp of what’s good falls so infinitely short of God’s actual goodness. When we deny, however, our language is more meaningful."

And this goes for the angels of light as well? Dominic asked.

Yes, but in a different way, of course, since the angels of light, as powerful and beautiful and awesome as they are, are still creatures. And I’ve told you a number of times now that they are not physical at all; they are pure spirits; pure intellects if you will.

Dominic was ready